The Roundtable Podcast have a wonderful podcast up for download on their website featuring a twenty minute interview with our favourite author Lauren Oliver.
The site delves into;
20(ish) minutes of intriguing conversation. Ryan Stevenson and I discover Laurens perspectives on the collaborative process, the power and virtue of YA literature, the power of understanding plot, and so much more…
So head on over to the Roundtable Podcast website and have a watch of this interview!
–
Recently BookBird had the opportunity to have a question and answer session with Lauren Oliver!
In the interview, they discuss her writing, whether she likes physical books or e-books, and what inspires:
Do you think Book covers are important or should you never judge a book by it’s cover?
I think book covers can often be misleading, but I think everyone is guilty of doing it to a certain extent.If you could have dinner with anyone in the world who would it be?
Hmm… maybe Alanis Morissette. She’s one of my favorite singers and has had such an interesting life!
The full interview can be read here
Cynsations is a source for conversations, publishing information, writer resources & inspiration, bookseller-librarian-teacher appreciation, children’s-YA book news & author outreach.
Recently they had an interview with Lauren in which she talks about the Delirium saga and Before I Fall which can be read in full here!
Here’s a preview;
By Karen Rock
for Cynthia Leitich Smith’s Cynsations
I’ve heard that Requiem will be told in alternating points of view. What prompted your exciting decision to change the narration of the series? What can you share about it with your fans?
In order to keep pushing myself as a writer, I feel I need to keep challenging myself to try different perspectives, different kinds of projects, different voices. So I really wanted Requiem to push the boundary in terms of what I’d already tried.
Total book addict is a blog which recently featured an interview with Lauren!
The blog had this to say about it;
I have been wanting to start doing author interviews on here so I thought who better to ask first then the author of one of my favourite books, Lauren Oliver. So when I asked her if she would be interested in doing an interview, she agreed! Which is amazing, so I came up with the best questions I could think of and I want to share her answers with all of you! But first lets get into a little bit of background of Lauren Oliver. She attended the University of Chicago majoring in philosophy and literature, after college she attended the MFA program at NYU. She comes from a family of writers and is an avid reader. Her first published novel is Before I Fall, which is my favorite!
The full interview can be read here and features questions on her writing, characters and imagination.
The interview talks mainly about her middle reader, Liesl and Po, as well as her upcoming title, The Spindlers. They also talk about Delirium and Pandemonium, and even Requiem a bit!
She had this to say about finishing the Delirium series:
“You know, I’ve already finished REQUIEM and moved on, and it was really, really tough at first. It took me several months to get used to the absence of Lena and the other characters from the Delirium trilogy. I floated around in a kind of funk and silence. But I’m easing into it slowly.”
And when asked which of her own books was her favorite, she had this to say:
“I’m proud of them all in very different ways. I think LIESL & PO might be my favorite for personal reasons, but I also love THE SPINDLERS for its sense of adventure. I still like BEFORE I FALL quite a bit and I think I pushed myself in REQUIEM in new and exciting ways. I don’t know. Honestly, it changes day by day!”
I’m really, really excited to see how she has pushed herself in Requiem.
You can read the full interview over here at Paranormal Indulgence!
You’re a big fan of Delirium and Pandemonium, but you need something else to dig into in that one year gap before Requiem! So what comes next? We suggest PARTIALS by Dan Wells, who traveled along with Lauren Oliver on the Dark Days Tour earlier this Spring!
Partials by Dan Wells
Finally, there’s some solid science fiction making its way into Young Adult literature! There’s been a strong science fiction following for ages, but very few books have successfully combined that geeky guilty pleasure into YA. Thankfully, Dan Wells released PARTIALS on February 28 and provided us with a story that satisfies our cravings for science fiction in a fine-tuned YA novel!
Kira is a 16-year-old medic living on Long Island, where the remainder of the human population lives after a deadly virus called RM has destroyed 99.996% of our kind. The virus was released by the Partials, human/machine crossbreeds created by the company ParaGen to fight America’s wars before they eventually turned on their own creators. Since the release of RM, not a single newborn has survived more than a few days after its birth. This is leads Kira’s society to the brink of chaos, where personal rights are often threatened for the good of society.
Kira thinks she may know a way to cure RM in newborns once and for all, but doing so will not be easy. Is she willing to risk it all for the chance to save human existence?
PARTIALS is a smart, action-packed thriller filled with suspense, political drama, romance, friendship, shocking twists, and an intellectual cherry on top.
We were lucky enough to interview Dan Wells about PARTIALS, complete with Star Trek references and the best inside joke ever.
We love the use of science in PARTIALS. Were you ever given any flack from people who worried younger audiences wouldn’t care for that element of the story?
Never, which is great. The publisher, and my agent and editors, were behind the idea from the beginning; they were actually excited that I was making it so much more science-y than a lot of other YA books out there. And the response from readers has been excellent: people who aren’t as interested in the science still like the book for the story and the characters. We really tried hard to make sure there was something for everyone.
Were any of your characters based off a popular icon or someone you know?
There are two minor characters in the Manhattan sequence of the book named Nick and Steve–or Skinny and Scruffy, as Kira calls them. Nick and Steve are friends of mine, and I put them into every book I write: Steve always lives and Nick always dies. I don’t know why, it just amuses me.
Continuing on from her last question session , Lauren Oliver has released part 2 of her most frequently asked questions:
My second book for middle-grade readers, THE SPINDLERS, will be released in October of this year. In the spring of 2013, the last book in my Delirium series, Requiem, comes out; and after that…who knows! I’m working on a teen standalone right now but it’s in its very early stages.
With difficulty! I keep lists of names I like, street names, and place names on my computer. But sometimes I just mix-and-match the names of people I know!
I started writing pretty much as soon as I was old enough to hold a pen and read on my own. My first stories were spin-offs of the books I loved, like CS Lewis and the Redwall series.
I pronounce it Hah-na (the way a British person might!), but most people say Hana to rhyme with the last syllable of banana, which is fine too. She’s used to it!
Discipline, discipline, discipline. I’ve trained myself to write every day, no matter what. And remember: the first drafts don’t have to be good, or even readable!
Recently Lauren Oliver answered some of the questions she is most frequently asked, surrounding Delirium, Pandemonium and all things in between. Enjoy!
I’m glad that you’re all as excited about the movie as I am! It’s especially gratifying to know how many of you identify so strongly with Lena’s character. It’s comforting to know there’s so many smart, thoughtful, loving–and, of course, butt-kicking–girls out there! Unfortunately, I have very little input into the process of casting; in fact, the casting decisions lie with the producers and the studio. I encourage all of you burgeoning actresses to direct your passion to local plays/productions and open auditions…and, of course, if you’re down to write and star in your own version of Delirium, I’m all about it!
Requiem is finished, but it needs to be edited, designed, shipped, etc. It usually takes about a year from the time a book leaves my computer to the time it hits shelves! So please be patient. It’s worth the wait, I promise! 🙂
You guys know I’m not going to give anything away, right? That would spoil all the fun! All I will say is that unlike the first two books in the trilogy, Requiem is told from the point of view of two different characters. Other than that, you’re gonna have to trust me that there’s a lot of fun surprises, and the return of some characters that we haven’t seen since Delirium!
Not because they’re paying me to – not that I’m complaining. 🙂 I have to write. I have a very deep and compelling desire to write that I can’t really turn off, so I’m very lucky and grateful that my life has turned out the way it has. Otherwise I’d probably be a failed back-up dancer and/or a very disgruntled waitress.
Soon after we finished Pandemonium, we had the extreme pleasure of interviewing Lauren Oliver, the brilliant author behind the Delirium trilogy! Besides being an amazing writer, it turns out that Lauren is also a super sweet (though we’re sure you already could have guessed that!)
Part 1 of the interview is spoiler-free when it comes to Pandemonium, however the last question discusses the details of Lauren’s five chapter e-novella Hana. If you’re still looking read the novella, please avoid that last question!
Lauren Oliver
You chose to structure Pandemonium much differently than the chapter-by-chapter set-up of Delirium. What brought that about?
I think I was just confronting a very broken Lena at the end of Delirium—and I needed, for my own sanity, to project forward, to know that she would turn out to be okay. So I began writing about her future self, and then I just continued alternating back and forth.
Were there any certain governments or organizations in history that inspired the political themes Pandemonium takes on?
This year was a landmark year for public unrest. In America, I was inspired by the Occupy movements, and I was deeply inspired by the so-called Arab Spring, and the demonstrations of a furious public in the streets of various repressive and fundamentalist regimes. All that was a big influence, yes.
You’ve introduced us to several members of the resistance, a few of which have amazing backstories. Did you invent backstories for all the characters? Will we hear more of them in the future?
I do have a sense of the backstories of the characters in the Wilds, yes—I find it helps to know more about your characters than you can put on the page. And we do learn more about certain members of the resistance in Requiem, although unfortunately, there simply isn’t room to speak about everyone.
We’ve heard lots of fans say that while Delirium is about love, Pandemonium is about anger and resentment. Would you agree?
Oh, wow! I hadn’t heard that. Pandemonium is a much more explosive book, it’s true. It deals with a lot of things—grief, anger, prejudice, and also, perhaps, healing.
***HANA SPOILER BELOW***
Lena cannot fully trust the government nor the resistance by the end of Pandemonium. In Hana, the eBook novella from Hana’s perspective, we learn that she reported Lena and Alex. Is there anyone in Lena’s life who is innately good and trustworthy?
There are many people in Lena’s life who are exceptionally good—including Hana. People are not “innately” one way or another. We must choose, over and over again, day by day, to act in a way that is in accordance with our values. Good people do terrible things sometimes. Terrible people do good things sometimes. We must be defined by our continued choices.
If you’ve already read Pandemonium, keep checking back for Part 2 of our interview, in which we discuss all the spoiler-y, in-depth details of the book! If you haven’t read it yet… GET READING!
Delirium Fandom 